In the Q&A, Watson shares his thoughts and insights on the writing process, on how his work for Time Magazine has affected his writing career, and on some of his writing endeavors and projects (particularly, one that involves a moody fellow named Moody Fellow).

On writing, Watson considers himself a “creature with no eyes” until he has a first draft, which then allows him to “figure out what the story is really about.” He finds that his work at Time greatly affects the way he writes (“sharpen[s his] writing at the sentence level”), and when talking about his past and present projects, Watson explains his motivation for writing:

“…I write, by the way: to play, to have fun. You’re not really supposed to have fun as an adult, but if you say, ‘I’m working on a novel,’ people furrow their brows and nod and imagine you scaling some great height, without a rope, under a baking sun. And, sure, writing is a little bit like that, but it can also be a little bit like playtime when you were a kid. Kids love to make things up, after all; they’re natural fiction writers. But we can’t pay them to write stories. Child-labor laws forbid it. That’s where adult fiction writers come in.”

The best writing advice Douglas Watson has ever gotten?

“I like Goethe’s admonition: ‘Do not hurry. Do not rest.’ I don’t know if he had writing in mind when he said that or if he was just talking about how to live well. Maybe he was training for a half-marathon, I don’t know. In any case, it is very good advice for a writer.”